The increasing complexity of information systems which integrate in particular client-server architectures and integrated local area networks renders measurement of performance and an efficient monitoring of service quality within these systems increasingly difficult. On the one hand, the administrators and managers of these information systems have been led to adopt a service-oriented approach towards users and to operate as service providers intent on providing quality services while confronted with reduced operating costs and, on the other hand, the users of these services are demanding ever higher levels of service quality.
Ensuring service quality requires a reliable system for retrieving relevant information from the various information system resources. However, it is difficult to exploit large-volume performance data sources located in network devices, in systems and in software applications, to consolidate this data and then to restore it in the form of summary reports for capacity or service quality management purposes. What is required is, on the one hand, management of service quality at user level: availability, application response time, reactivity of technical support in the event of an incident and, on the other hand, management of technical service quality relating to the infrastructure itself: traffic, network transit times, CPU time consumption, etc.
There already exist software products which supply service quality monitoring information within information systems, such as "TRENDsnmp+" from the company DESKTALK Systems Inc., which comprises a set of generic applications for the collection and collation of data, management and generation of reports and logs. This software package can process data originating from any devices supporting the SNMP protocol (Simple Network Management Protocol), and includes specialised support for the MIB Remote Monitoring standard (RMON).
Another known product is "Network Health" from the company CONCORD. This product consists of a family of automated solutions for network analysis and report generation.
Another product is "Perfagent" from the company ACANTHE SOFTWARE. This product is a multi-platform operations management report generator for an SNMP environment. It provides real time monitoring, Indicator archiving in relational databases and offline analysis of the status of the components of a network or an information system.
The product "ISM statistics" from the company BULL automates the collection and management of data as well as the creation of reports for statistical management of an information system. Collected data is organised around object classes representing real network elements. For each object class, this product provides data, called Indicators, representing each object's load or activity. It processes Indicators, in particular by summary or filtering. Information is stored in a relational database.
The product "Performance Reporter" from the company IBM also provides a set of management and other reports for management of the service quality of an information system, and in particular it supports the SNMP protocol. Another network management product which can be mentioned is "SPECTRUM" from the company CABLETRON SYSTEMS Inc. This product in particular includes a service quality management module based on inductive modelling of the network. Document W09626588 (Cabletron Systems) discloses a process for managing network configurations grouping at least one network element to form a network group. An identifier is supplied for each network device and a database is modified to contain a relationship between the device and the group identifier.
Document US5459837 (Digital Equipment Corporation) discloses a process and a system for measuring the performance of servers within a network.
The document "Monitoring performance in distributed systems", published in COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS, Vol.19, No.9/10, pages 788-802, August 1996, discloses a process for continuously monitoring distributed systems, that implements an oriented-object approach for the management of the various elements of a distributed system. The oriented-object model used in this process includes the concepts of class and inheritance.
The document "Integrated network management: technologies and implementation experience", published in IEEE INFOCOM, Vol.2, pages 1020-1027, August 1992, discloses methods of integrated network management implementing an oriented-object modelling for the logical and physical components of the network and their related data. The described model comprises two types of relations between objects: a relation "parent" for notifying to a component the status of its "children", and a relation of dependance that is used for deriving the status of an object from its support components.
The document "CCITT standardisation of telecommunications management networks", published in ERICSSON REVIEW, Vol.68, No.2, pages 34-51, January 1991, discloses CCITT standardisation works for network management systems, including an oriented-object approach. Every managed object belongs to a class that can be a sub-class of an another class. The sub-class inherits all the properties of the class on which said sub-class is dependent. The different classes are submitted to an inheritance hierarchy.
Now, to provide efficient measurement of performance and service quality monitoring of increasingly complex systems, it is necessary to carry out overall modelling of the information system, which can lead to homogenisation of the information system's objects and the collected data.